Ironhand (25 page)

G
eorge hit the Walker at full speed, every ounce of power and rage in his body powering him into the larger man like a runaway train.

He knew he was too late. He knew Edie was dead. He knew it was his fault.

The impact cartwheeled the two of them into a cloud of snow.

George swung the heavy hammer in his fist right at the Walker’s body, as if he could stop the black heart in one massive blow.

The hammer slammed into something the Walker was wearing under his sweatshirt, something thick that gave way and cracked at the same time.

The Walker gasped as the air was pile-driven out of him, but his left hand clawed out and gripped George by the hair and ear. The two of them staggered to their feet, eye to eye. The Walker got a breath and snarled at George, his good eye blazing.

“Are you going to try and fight me, boy?”

“No,” gritted George. “I’m going to kill you.”

As he accepted the challenge, George felt a searing pain in his arm jagging toward his armpit, and he knew without being able or needing to look that the twisting channel of bronze in his arm had ripped forward, heading for his heart.

He knew this was the second contest; this brutal tussle in the snow was his next duel, the moment he would live or die by.

And he didn’t care.

Because there was no way on earth that he wasn’t going to make good on his word.

The Walker was a dead man.

“It’s a waste, boy. But I have all the time in the world.”

Time slowed. George saw the flash of the knife as the Walker pulled it back and slashed it up toward his belly in a cruel, gutting blow.

George’s hand was moving before conscious thought kicked in, and this time it didn’t flinch. It closed around the sharp blade and held it tight, stopping it an inch from his belly.

The Walker’s eye widened in shock at the strength of the boy. And what the Walker saw made him step back a half pace. The boy’s eyes were as hard and unforgiving as stone.

“I don’t think so,” said George.

He jerked his hand sharply and snapped the blade clean.

Then he pulled his hand back behind his shoulder, and when the Walker let go of his hair and tried to get away, George gripped the Walker’s hand and held him as he stabbed the blade down into the Walker’s heart.

The blade hit something hard and skittered sideways; but with all the cold rage George had put into the blow, it still buried itself in the Walker’s shoulder, so deep that George couldn’t pull it out.

He let go and took a microsecond to notice that his hand wasn’t cut at all, despite the fact that he had gripped the double-edged blade like a vise.

The Walker stared at the broken blade in his shoulder and howled in fury.

George had time to look down at the black hole in the ice. Edie was long gone. He quickly stooped and picked up the blazing piece of sea-glass she’d dropped in her struggle. He could see it wasn’t hers; it was the wrong shape and color, but he knew it for what it was, and without thinking, he dropped it into the water. If she was alone and dead in the inky blackness, somehow, the least he could do was leave the light on.

He turned back to the howling Walker, stepped across the gap between them, and punched him in the face. The Walker went silent in shock at the force of the blow.

In the distance, there was the approaching sound of something screaming in short, excited bursts. But George ignored it and kept on coming. He hit the Walker with a straight punch that knocked him flat on his back. Only then did George step back, in order to pick up his hammer and stand over him.

There was a thunder of hooves, and the Walker’s eyes flicked left. He sneered up at George through a bloody mouth.

“Now you die, boy.”

George turned his head and saw the Bull thundering across the ice.

“Maybe,” said George, “but you die first.” He raised the hammer. “I’ll deal with your bull after that.”

“It’s not the bull.” The Walker smiled, his eyes flicking upward.

The Icarus hit him like an airborne sledgehammer.

T
he Gunner hit the narrow channel of water between the ice and the riverbank like a depth charge.

He’d seen Edie go under, and that neither he nor George would get there in time to save her. So he made the only choice that remained, which was to go under the ice.

Tons of bronze don’t swim too well, so he hit the bed of the Thames and did the best he could to plow through the blackness toward the spot where he estimated the hole in the ice was. The human part of him went through the searing drowning pain of oxygen starvation, but he was so driven that he didn’t bother trying to hold his breath—he just sucked in water and got on with it.

He couldn’t see a thing, and surged forward by instinct alone. The snow-covered ice made a perfect roof over the river, blocking out all light. And as he moved ahead, he realized he wasn’t going to be able to see Edie’s ice hole either, since looking straight up was only going to bring a dark view of the night sky, which would be indistinguishable from the impenetrable murk surrounding him.

He flailed around with his arms as he went, hoping that if he couldn’t see Edie’s body, he might at least touch it by chance. But as he stared blindly, he realized it was a forlorn hope.

The girl was gone.

Then an orange light dropped out of the ice roof overhead, and he looked up and caught a brief glimpse of the world above, with George staring sightlessly downward, his face momentarily lit up by the falling heart stone before he jerked away from the hole.

The Gunner reached out his hand and caught the stone on its chain and held it high, like a lantern in a storm. The orange light shone so brightly that the turbid river water became somehow less opaque—and that’s when the Gunner saw the body, its foot caught in a broken cart wheel half buried in the ooze, its hair lifelessly going with the flow, pointing toward the sea.

He freed Edie’s foot and grabbed her, surging toward the riverbank. As he powered forward, he looked down at her pale dead face and looped the heart stone around her neck so he could get a better grip. He hugged her tightly to his body, as if he could force some of his life into her.

And of course you can’t cry under water, so the stinging in his eyes must just have been the Thames resisting his attempt to run through it.

He scrambled up the slope toward the torch-lit strip of light, and pulled himself out of the water. He felt Edie’s body flop against him as he coughed his way to his feet. He was about to start pumping water out of her, when he heard the ice scrabble and the angry snorting that heralded the approaching bull. He scooped her up and ran.

Out of the corner of his eye, George saw the Gunner emerge from the ice. The Icarus flew George away from the Walker, who was lying on his back and tugging at his clothes, trying urgently to get something out of his sweatshirt.

The Icarus screamed at George, and he looked into the blind curve of the creature’s breastplate. Somewhere inside the intricate structure, a mouth was shrieking angrily at him.

The Icarus was a worse flier than Spout. George was only about twenty feet off the ice, but he was heading away from the Gunner and what he had pulled from the water. He was unable to see what the Walker was doing. The only good thing was that he saw something pop into existence and gallop across the ice, heading for the Gunner, the whirling blades on its chariot wheels twisting ice devils out of the snow as it thundered beneath him.

George still had the hammer in his hand.

“One chance,” he said to whatever was behind the jutting hull masking the face in front of him. “Put me down.”

The Icarus howled and shook him angrily. When George looked down, he realized that the thing was gripping him with its human feet, which crushed him with toes like sinewy talons.

“Fine,” he said.

He smashed the hammer into the hull. He hit it again and again, and as he did so, the Icarus shrieked and lurched in the sky. There was a crack, and the breastwork gave way, and George was staring into the mad eyes of the Icarus.

The Icarus was a man cramped and jammed into the narrow confining space of a basketwork hull. His arms and hands were folded in on themselves, and his mouth and lower face were bound with some kind of webbing— but not so obscured that George couldn’t see the hostile insanity snarling out of the face.

“Last chance. Put me down,” said George.

The feet tore at him angrily and the eyes burned brighter. The head shook violently back and forth in an unmistakable “No.”

“Then I’m sorry,” he said, and whacked the hammer dead center on the straining forehead. The mad eyes rolled back, and the Icarus plummeted, unconscious and, for the first time, silent.

George had time to see that they were going to land in open water, just beyond the point where the ice began. He booted himself free of the Icarus’s limp feet in the instant before they hit the water.

The Icarus hit the river and kept going down. George kicked for the surface and gasped for air, then turned in time to see the edge of the ice approaching as the river pulled him toward it. The edge was a confusion of trapped driftwood and branches, and he had a horror-struck premonition that he was about to be sucked beneath the ice. He grabbed at the edge as he reached it, but the ice bobbled away beneath his fingers, and he was pulled under.

On the surface of the ice, the Gunner had seen the Bull just in time. He grabbed Edie’s body and leaped clear as the sharp horns thundered in. The Bull tried to hook him, but its momentum made it overshoot, and it crashed into the snow piled on the riverbank.

The Gunner heard his name being called, and whirled to see the Queen approaching across the flat ice field, her horses straining against their harness, their feet kicking up great divots of impacted snow as they raced to the rescue. There was another figure on the chariot, and because the man was hatless, it took the Gunner an instant to realize it was the Officer.

He sped toward the incoming chariot, cradling the dead body as he ran. He heard a snort and the drumming of hooves behind him and knew that the Bull had turned and was now running after him.

As the chariot approached without slowing, the gap behind him closed almost as fast.

He saw the Officer point urgently straight down and shout something.

“Mind the wheels!”

The Officer snapped his arm out, leaning so wide over the spinning blades that the Queen had to lean far in the opposite side to stop the chariot from tipping. Then time went very quickly as they closed in on the Gunner at breathtaking speed. He felt the Bull’s breath on his back and a light tug as it tried to hook him again, but he had no time to think about how close the creature must be, because he had to concentrate on the spinning blades whirling in toward his knees. He stuck his arm out as if he were signaling a turn and hurdled the blades as they swept in under him. This open hand slapped onto the Officer’s reaching forearm and gripped it at the same time the Officer grabbed his arm.

The momentum swung him up and around as the Officer anchored himself on the chariot rail, and the Gunner was on board.

The Bull had no time to slow his headlong pursuit, and the spinning blades opened him up like a giant can opener, splashing twisting curls of bright bronze in its wake. The Bull pitched forward, its horns digging into the ice and throwing it into a slamming somersault, where it lay still, upended and wreathed in its bronze entrails.

The Queen looked back. “He won’t be killing any more women.”

The Gunner dropped Edie to the bucking floor of the chariot and started to pump water out of her. It was like trying to work on the pitching deck of a ship.

“Help me,” he said.

The Officer grabbed him and held him steady.

The Queen was turning the chariot. “Hold on,” she shouted.

The Officer looked up and saw she was racing toward her two daughters, who were holding the mirrors up.

“George,” shouted the Gunner as he futilely pumped water from the dead girl.

“
You
hold on,” shouted the Officer. As the Queen hit the mirrors the first time with the tip of her spear, the Officer let go of the Gunner and leaped off the back of the chariot. There was a pop, and the chariot disappeared. The Officer scrambled to his feet.

“Stay there,” he said to the girls, and ran away from the lights of the Frost Fair, toward the dark end of the ice.

“S
he’s dead,” said the Gunner as the Queen reined her horses in and brought the chariot to a sliding halt in front of the Artillery Memorial. The Queen dropped to her knees next to where the Gunner was pumping at Edie’s chest with the heel of his hand.

“Then why are you still doing that?” she asked as she moved around to Edie’s head.

“Because I don’t know what else to bloody do,” he said.

The Queen looked up and saw big tears rolling out of his eyes.

She bent over Edie’s open mouth, tilted her head back, and pinched her nose. She took a breath and blew it into the waterlogged lungs. She did it again. She listened. And when there was no answering breath, she did it again. For a while, the two of them tried to revive the small dead body, refusing to accept the truth that she had gone.

Eventually the Gunner looked at the Queen. His eyes had emptied and were now deserts of dry despair.

“Why are
you
doing this?”

She wiped her eyes, and the Gunner saw an echo of the dead girl in the way her jaw came stubbornly forward.

“Because I don’t know what else to do either. Except keep fighting.”

“Fair enough.” He pumped Edie’s chest. “Neither did Edie.”

He thumped his fist into Edie’s breastbone in frustration and grief, just as the Queen had blown in, and suddenly Edie threw up a great lungful of river water and then convulsed in a terrible coughing spasm.

Her eyes flickered open, then closed again as she passed out. The Gunner felt her heart. It was beating faintly. He stared at her in disbelief. He looked at the Queen. He’d never seen her smile before, but now her face shone back at him.

“Neither
had
she, I think you mean,” the Queen said.

He beamed back at her. “If you weren’t a bloody queen I’d kiss you.”

“If I weren’t a bloody queen I might well let you.”

Then her face snapped back its normal businesslike demeanor.

“She’s not out of the woods yet. She could still die of cold. We need a fire.”

“We haven’t got a fire.”

The Queen was unfastening her cloak. “Well, get a coat or something. We need to warm her up.”

The Gunner held Edie’s wrist. “Her pulse is hardly there at all.”

“Get a move on, then,” she snapped, and started stripping the cloak from Edie’s body.

The Gunner ran over to the monument, where he saw the Officer’s coat and hat sitting next to the wet bundle of heart stones he had brought from the underground tank. As he picked up the Officer’s coat, he noticed that the bundle was steaming.

“Hurry up,” shouted the Queen. “We’ve got to get her into something warm. She’s slipping away again.”

“Hold up,” he said as he threw the coat over his shoulder and untied the bundle. Light blazed at him. He quickly looked around to see if there was a taint or the Walker creeping up on them. But then he noticed something about the light. The glass stones had been of all different colors, but now they were glowing with the same warm hue, like the orange at the heart of a well-banked-up fire.

“Gunner!” shouted the Queen. “We’re losing her.”

The Gunner dumped the heart stones next to her.

“Heart stones. The bloody Walker kept them as trophies of all the glints he’d culled.”

Like him, the Queen looked around searching for danger.

“No,” he said, as he started placing the stones around Edie. “They’re not warning us. I think they feel her. I think it’s the spark of all them troubled girls kindling one last time. I think it’s them having a last laugh at the Walker.”

The Queen watched him carefully place a stone over Edie’s heart, and then she dug her hands into the blazing stone pile and helped him surround Edie with the warmth, and wrapped her with her own cloak and the Officer’s coat.

And in the end, it wasn’t just the fact that the Gunner and the Queen wouldn’t let her die that saved Edie. It was as the Gunner thought: it was all the lost girls and the lonely girls, all the odd women who thought they might be a bit mad because they didn’t quite fit in— because they didn’t understand that their glinting could be a gift and not a curse—it was all of
them
who surrounded this last lost lonely girl and gave her the final warm sparks that their lives had stored in their stones, so that she could go on and live for them.

Because the Queen knew this was so, she wept as she watched the color return to Edie’s face and her eyes flicker open again.

Edie’s small hand twitched where it lay in the Gunner’s big bronze palm. He closed his hand gently on it. Her eyes focused, and as she recognized him, she gripped his hand fiercely, and he again saw the rare small miracle of her smile break across her face like sunshine.

“It’s all right,” he said gruffly. “I’ve got you. You were too tough for the Walker to kill. And you were too bloody tough for the river to kill. You’re safe.”

Edie nodded and coughed harshly.

“Where’s George?”